![]() JOHN McDANIEL (music) is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning Music Director, Composer, Director, Arranger, Orchestrator & Producer and is an Artistic Director at the Tony Award winning Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Michelle and their five children. His other plays include Breaking Bobby Stone, Broken Snow (2017 Carbonel Award nominated for Best New Work), and Bar Mitzvah in Birmingham (musical). Ben worked closely with Disney TV Animation developing the animated series “Hunachi” for Jetix/ABC Family and wrote numerous episodes for the BBC animated series “Friends and Heroes.” As EVP and head of AV at BOND (Clio Entertainment Agency of the year 2019, 2020/2021), Ben has been creatively involved in the releases of major Hollywood films and TV series, including the Batman, Under the Banner of Heaven, Joker, Tiger King, Cobra Kai, HBO’s Watchmen, and has won numerous Clio Entertainment awards, most recently the Grand Clio for “Matrix Resurrections”. wall-e.BEN ANDRON (book) had his first play, White’s Lies, produced Off-Broadway in 2010. Brave New World: And, Brave New World Revisited. ![]() While the setting, storyline and style of the film are very original, WALL-E’s success as a piece of critical dystopian fiction is probably due to the similarities it shares with Huxley’s classic work. The use of excess for control, however, is where WALL-E most effectively draws from Brave New World. For example, the character of WALL-E can be likened to John the savage – they both hail from outside of controlled society and rebel against what they find. The similarities do not end there between the texts. They are essentially a combination of all of the entertainment technology present at that time. Where Huxley draws from the “talkies” of the 1930s as inspiration for the “feelies,” the wheelchair screens in WALL-E are influenced by television and gaming consoles from the mid to late 2000s. It is worth noting that both texts rely heavily on the technology of their time to speculate on technology use in the future. This is another Huxleyan idea and has the ring of Huxley’s own Hatchery Centre in Brave New World. They are conditioned through their screens to see the corporation “Buy n Large” (who are responsible for the supply of food and technological entertainment) as an almost god-like figure (Stanton). It is the first time she has not been in constant engagement with technology, and she exclaims “Huh, I didn’t know we had a pool,” completely oblivious to the surroundings she has lived in since birth (Stanton).Įven the children in WALL-E are parented through technology. WALL-E takes a less adult approach and puts forward that the excessive consumption of food (which leaves all residents wheelchair ridden) and constant technological interaction are effective social controls. The incapacitating nature of this over-consumption in WALL-E is demonstrated when one adult resident gets her screen knocked away. For example, the heavy and constant use of the drug “Soma,” and the regular exposure of the World State’s populace to the “feelies” (Huxley). In Brave New World, we see a social order maintained through excess. Similarly to Brave New World, the film also extrapolates and modernizes the technology of its own time, and effectively demonstrates the dangers of continual reliance on these technologies. ![]() Set in 2805, and following the exploits of a robot responsible for garbage processing, the film engages with the very Huxleyan idea of a society controlled through excess and consumption. One example of such a text is the Pixar film WALL-E. It is interesting then, to examine works that whilst still original in their speculation, clearly draw from Huxley’s thoughts and ideas in the construction of their future. Critically speaking, however, it is my view that modern dystopian fiction seems to fall short to the likes of Huxley’s work in Brave New World. As the popularity of dystopian fiction continues to increase, creativity around how the future is approached seems to be an important factor in how dystopian texts are received. ![]()
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